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Mircea laughed delightedly. “I would love to, dulceat?, but I don’t trust myself. The temptation to rid us of his annoying presence would be too great, and the Consul said most specifically that he was not to be harmed unless he gave cause.” He slid his eyes in Pritkin’s direction. “And alas, so far he has behaved himself.”
“I meant with me.”
“No.” Tomas spoke up, causing me to jump slightly in surprise. He’d been so quiet that I’d almost forgotten he was there. “She is not to be harmed.”
“I think, Tomas, that is the point our dear Cassandra is trying to make,” Mircea replied. “That, done properly, it is not harmful.” He looked at me. “You must have been a frequent donor at court, yes? You understand the procedure?”
I nodded. “Yep, not to mention feeding a ravenous ghost on occasion.” Having done both, I knew that what the vamps did was little different than Billy Joe’s feedings, except that he could absorb life energy directly and they had to get it through blood. Billy was able to skip that step, a good thing since his body was somewhere at the bottom of the Mississippi. He’d have trouble metabolizing even a liquid diet.
Mircea glided over with that peculiar grace of his. All the undead have it, but he made even most vamps look clumsy. He was an old hand at this; I knew he wouldn’t hurt me and he was too full to take much. It was Billy Joe I would have liked to throttle—if the coward hadn’t run off somewhere. Billy’s feedings normally didn’t bother me, since I could replenish the energy he took with food and rest. But he knew the rules about how much I was willing to donate at once, and tonight he’d broken them all to hell.
“What are you going to do?” Pritkin started forward, but Tomas would not let him by. Neither looked happy.
“Make sure he has a good view, Tomas,” Mircea said, looking down at me thoughtfully. “I will do this only once. Cassandra is already tired, and we have much to talk about. I do not wish to put her to sleep.” He smiled and cupped my chin in his hand. He felt warm, but then, he always did. The old ones don’t have temperature fluctuations based on whether they have eaten recently or not. “I will not hurt you,” he promised.
I was remembering why I’d always liked Mircea. The deep brown eyes and graceful physique had certainly played a part, adolescent hormones being what they are, but his appearance had been less important to me than his honesty. I had never once caught him in a lie. I was sure he was a capable enough liar when he wanted to be—it would be pretty much impossible to function at court otherwise—but he had always been frank with me. It might sound like a little thing, but in a system run by deception and evasion, sincerity was priceless. I smiled up at him, only half for Pritkin’s sake. “I know.”
Pritkin couldn’t get to me, but he could still yell. “This is insane! You’re going to let him feed off you? Willingly? You’ll end up like one of them!”
Mircea answered for me, his dark eyes steady on mine. They were not a true brown, I realized, but a combination of many colors: cappuccino, cinnamon, gold and a few flecks of deep green. They were beautiful. “If we fed on the population at large as you seem to think, Mage Pritkin, how could we avoid making thousands, even millions of new vampires? It only takes three bites over consecutive days from a seventh-level master or higher. Can you believe that, with no restrictions, it would not happen time and again? Either by accident or intentionally? Soon, we would be no longer merely a myth, and would again be hunted.”
He stopped, but he didn’t need to go on. I couldn’t believe that even Pritkin was unaware of what had happened to Dracula, and Mircea himself had been almost caught and killed many times in the early years. Radu, his younger brother, had not been so lucky. He had been taken by a mob in Paris and delivered to the Inquisition. They had tortured him for well over a century, until, when Mircea finally found and freed him, he was dangerously mad. Radu had been locked away ever since.
“It was constant war once,” Mircea continued, as if he knew what I had been thinking. “Between us and the humans, between families of vampyre, between us and the mages, and on and on. Until the senates rose, until they said enough, or we will destroy ourselves in the end. No one wants to return to that, especially the conflict with the humans. Even if we won against the billions who would oppose us, we would lose, for who would feed us if they were gone?” He looked at Pritkin. “We do not wish for huge numbers of us, running wild, with no supervision and no hope of secrecy, any more than you do. We bite to drain a subject in an execution, or to frighten as with the captives today. But for a normal feeding,” he said, returning his attention to me, “we prefer a gentler method.” He smiled, and it was like the sun broke through the clouds after days of rain. It was b
reathtaking.
“What are you doing to her?” Pritkin looked around Tomas’ shoulders. “You’re not doing anything.” He sounded almost disappointed.
Tomas reached out and removed Mircea’s hand from my face. “Leave her alone.”
Mircea regarded him with amusement. “She offered, Tomas; you heard her. What is the trouble? I have promised to be gentle.” Tomas’ eyes flashed and his jaw clenched. He did not look appeased. Mircea’s eyes widened slightly, then sparkled wickedly. “Forgive me; I did not understand. But surely you cannot begrudge me one small taste?” He stroked my face, a lazy caress, but his eyes were on Tomas. “Is she as sweet as she looks?” Tomas actually growled at him, and this time he flung Mircea’s hand away.
I wished Mircea would get on with it. I wanted to question Pritkin, and I couldn’t while he was on his vampire fixation. “Can we just do this?”
“I will do it, if it must be done,” Tomas said and bent his head towards me.
I immediately pulled away. “Uh-uh. I never agreed to that.” I owed Tomas a few things all right, but a feeding wasn’t one of them.
Mircea laughed again, a rich, mellow sound. “Tomas! You did not tell her?”
“Tell me what?” My mood was not improving.
The glint in Mircea’s eyes was pure mischief. “Only that he has been feeding from you for months, dulceat?, and, as often happens in such cases, he has become…territorial.”
I looked at Tomas in shock. “Tell me he’s kidding.”
The answer was on his face before he spoke, and I felt the world tilt. In vamp circles, feeding has strict rules. Even the same norm can’t be fed from regularly, as it creates a feeling of possession in the vamp involved and can lead to all sorts of problems because of jealousy. But taking blood without permission from someone connected with our world is considered even more of a violation. That’s not only because of the often sexual by-product of the feeding process, but also because anyone recognized as part of the supernatural community has special rights. Tomas had just broken a whole group of laws, not to mention betraying me yet again. So everything about him had been one vampire trick or another, from the way he looked to the way I’d felt. I might have eventually been able to forgive him the deception, but not this. I couldn’t believe he’d done it, but looking at him, I knew he had.
Tomas licked his lips. “It was not frequent, Cassie. I had to know where you were at all times, and regular feedings create a bond. They helped me keep you safe.”
“How very generous of you.” I could barely get the words out; it felt like someone had hit me.
I started to rise—I’m not sure why—when Mircea put a restraining hand on my shoulder. His expression was suddenly serious, as if he realized something of how much the news had affected me. “You have every right to be annoyed with Tomas, dulceat?, but now is not the time. It is my fault; I shouldn’t have teased him. I will refrain, if you will please let it go for the moment. Otherwise we will waste the day in arguments.”
“I don’t want to argue,” I said, and it was true. I wanted to throw something at Tomas’ head, preferably something heavy. But that wouldn’t get me answers, and right then, I needed information more than revenge. “Fine. Just get him away from me.”
“Done. Tomas, if you please?” Tomas looked like he was going to argue, but after a noticeable pause he moved off about two feet. Then he stopped, looking mulish. I would have pushed the issue, but he would only have said that he needed to be close to watch Pritkin. Since I tended to agree with that, I kept quiet.
